WASHINGTON -- Senior U.S. national security officials told a Senate committee on Monday that the 2001 war authorization for combat operations against terrorist groups is legally sufficient for operations in 19 countries.
Defense Secretary James Mattis warned that prematurely repealing the law could signal America is "backing away from this fight."
Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee three months after they informed the panel that the post-Sept. 11, 2001, law gave the military ample authority to fight terrorist groups and that a new law was unnecessary. A separate authorization for the war in Iraq, approved by Congress in 2002, also remains in force.
The two men said that if Congress does pursue a new authorization for foes such as the Islamic State militant group, it's imperative that the existing law not be rescinded until a new one is fully in place. Tillerson and Mattis also said that any new war authorization, like the existing one, should not impose any geographic or time restrictions on military actions because those would tip off the enemy.
"Though a statement of continued congressional support would be welcome, a new [war authorization] is not legally required to address the continuing threat posed by al-Qaida, the Taliban and ISIS," Mattis said, using an acronym for the Islamic State. But doing away with existing laws prematurely "could only signal to our enemies and our friends that we are backing away from this fight."
But Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, pushed back, saying that with U.S. forces in multiple hostile environments, a new or revised law is needed.
"There needs to be more public discussion and light on these activities because I do not think the American people want the United States conducting a global, endless shadow war under the radar, covert and beyond scrutiny," Cardin said.
The debate over the authorization has heated up after the deaths of four U.S. soldiers in an ambush this month in Niger. Lawmakers have said they haven't been kept informed of U.S. deployments and haven't received enough information about what happened in the African nation. They've argued that the dynamics of the battlefield have shifted over the past 16 years and that it's past time to replace the post-Sept. 11 authorization to fight al-Qaida with a law that reflects current threats.
Lawmakers have also raised questions about looser restraints on the use of armed drones and the increased authority given to commanders in the field to carry out missions.
Under questioning from Cardin about the Niger attack, Mattis said U.S. troops had been deployed there "in a train-and-advise role" and weren't there under the authorizations for the use of force.
"The mission of those troops on that patrol was a combined patrol, which means they were with Niger troops," Mattis said.
About 800 U.S. service members are in Niger as part of a French-led mission to defeat extremists in West Africa. There are hundreds more American forces in other African countries.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., highlighted the fact that none of the 21 members of the committee were members of the Senate when the 2001 war authorization was approved. Flake and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., are sponsoring legislation for a new war authority for operations against the Islamic State, al-Qaida and the Taliban.
Flake said he understood the reluctance expressed by Mattis and Tillerson not to telegraph when U.S. troops might depart a particular war zone. But he said that concern is "overwhelmed in a big way by not having Congress buy in and us not having skin in the game."
"It simply allows us to criticize the administration, Republican or Democrat, if we don't like what they're doing because we haven't weighed in," Flake said.
Kaine said last week that he believed most Americans would be surprised by the extent of the operations in Africa that U.S. forces are involved in.
"I don't think Congress has necessarily been completely kept up to date, and the American public, I think, certainly has not," Kaine said after leaving a classified briefing conducted by senior Pentagon officials on the assault in Niger.
NUCLEAR-STRIKE CONCERNS
Committee Democrats on Monday also asked Tillerson and Mattis whether there are any circumstances that would allow Trump to launch a nuclear first strike against North Korea or another country without consulting any members of Congress.
Both secretaries declined to say whether the administration would seek such permission and said Trump could act under his constitutional powers as commander in chief.
Mattis noted that the question was hypothetical, but he said he could imagine a scenario where it's possible if another country were preparing to fire weapons of mass destruction at the United States.
Mattis also said the process for launching nuclear weapons is very rigorous.
Tillerson said no U.S. president "has forsworn first strike, and that has served us well for 70 years."
"I think this is an area where a number of facts would have to bear on the problem," he added.
Both secretaries said part of the problem for the modern military is that the groups the U.S. is fighting have transformed over the years. Mattis said they "change their name as often as a rock 'n' roll band." Tillerson said the enemy "has morphed and changed over these 16 years, which I know is part of why this is such a vexing issue."
U.S. troops also are battling the Islamic State in Syria -- an enemy that didn't exist in its current form 16 years ago, in a country where the U.S. didn't expect to be fighting. Nor did the 2001 authorization anticipate military confrontations with the Syrian government. Trump in April ordered the firing of dozens of Tomahawk missiles at an air base in central Syria, and American forces in June shot down a Syrian air force fighter jet.
Beyond that, Trump approved a troop increase in Afghanistan, the site of America's longest war, and the U.S. backs a Saudi Arabia-led coalition carrying out airstrikes in Yemen.
But previous attempts to ditch the old authorization and force Congress to craft a new one have failed. Democrats have complained that House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., stripped an amendment from a military spending bill that would have repealed the 2001 war authorization 240 days after the bill was enacted. Proponents of the measure said eight months was enough time to approve new war authority.
GOP leaders said voting to rescind existing war authority without a replacement in hand risks leaving U.S. troops and commanders in combat zones without the necessary legal authority they need to carry out military operations.
A similar effort in the Senate led by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also came up short. Paul, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee and a leader of the GOP's noninterventionist wing, has accused his colleagues of surrendering their war-making power to the White House.
Information for this article was contributed by Richard Lardner, Andrew Taylor, Josh Lederman and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Nick Wadhams and Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg News.
A Section on 10/31/2017